CIG Taking Out Features From Star Citizen’s Roadmap, Blames Community

Star Citizen has been in development for what seems like forever. Chris Roberts is leading this colossal project from Cloud Imperium Games. The pre-production had started back in 2010. The game was revealed on October 18, 2012, via a successful Kickstarter campaign that garnered over $2 million. Star Citizen was supposed to be out in 2014, but the game has escalated its ambitions since the Kickstarter ended. Nevertheless, time flow has clarified that the game has gone through massive development hell.

Ambitions of Star Citizen could make other sci-fi games blush, provided they live up to the promises. Star Citizen can be best represented as a sci-fi multiplayer space trading and combat simulation experience. It merges aspects of MMO roleplaying and sci-fi. Roberts Space Industries sums up the description of Star Citizen beautifully.

In Star Citizen, you can be whoever you want and explore the stars on your own terms. You can mine ore, haul cargo, hunt bounties, become a mercenary, or even take up a life of crime. Fly and drive a vast variety of vehicles and play how you want to play – the possibilities are endless.

Cloud Imperium Games Expunge Features From Roadmap

Although Star Citizen has potential, it appears to be more talk and less action. CIG has delivered rather impressive “modules” to the community. The bulk of players have lost expectations; They also received a barrage of criticism for the hassle contributors who ditched the project encountered in acquiring a refund. Primarily, the dilation of this project has caused some of the supporters to give up.

The approach of CIG is only adding more fuel to the fire. There is a lack of honesty and miscommunication with Star Citizen‘s supporters. Recently, they have taken out features from their roadmap. A volley of opprobrium ensued; players interpreted this act as retracting their promises. Dubbing it a “Roadmap Roundup,” CIG went on to state:

“It has become abundantly clear to us that despite our best efforts to communicate the fluidity of development, and how features marked as Tentative should sincerely not be relied upon, the general focus of many of our most passionate players has continued to lead them to interpret anything on the Release View as a promise.

We want to acknowledge that not all of you saw it that way; many took our new focus and our words to heart and understood exactly what we tried to convey. But there still remains a very loud contingent of Roadmap watchers who see projections as promises. And their continued noise every time we shift deliverables has become a distraction both internally at CIG and within our community, as well as to prospective Star Citizen fans watching from the sidelines at our Open Development communications.”

In short, CIG conceded that not delivering on features they’re listing that will someday become the game makes them look imperfect. It’s adequate to have a vague idea of features that should ultimately get in the game that is never coming out.

A roadmap is a set of features to be added in the future. Naturally, scads of anticipation surround it; it is the only way of knowing what is to come. Taking elements out of it is deemed false advertising and incompetence by some fans. 

Altogether, understanding your project’s limits is a part of the development cycle. Overhyping and increasing the scope without delivering on them calls for disaster; the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 rings a bell. CIG is currently in the alpha stages of development. We may get more insight into this project this year. What are your thoughts?